25% tariffs on Indian goods<\/a>, unless India cut energy purchases from Russia, which currently make up more than 35% of its oil imports. The penalty would kick in by August 27 unless Russia stops the war in Ukraine. The threat is expected to add pressure on both India and Russia ahead of a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir Putin next week, and the upcoming visit by Mr. Putin to India for the annual summit with Mr. Modi.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cAt the global level, Russia is not Iran,\u201d former Indian Ambassador to the U.S. Arun Singh told The Hindu in an interview. \u201cWe want Russia, as one of the major powers in the international context, to be an important partner of India, and there\u2019s a memory in India of Russia in the past having provided political support [and] …defence technology that nobody else was willing to provide,\u201d he added, also warning that if India were to cave in to Mr. Trump\u2019s demands, this would only increase the U.S.\u2019s appetite to demand more concessions from India.<\/p>\n
According to scholar Brahma Chellaney, the U.S. move on Russian oil is a cover to strong-arm India into accepting trading terms the U.S. wants, including market access for agricultural products.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201c[Mr.] Trump is weaponising Russian oil purchases to force a largely one-sided trade deal on India,\u201d said Mr. Chellaney, who is a Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research and Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. He pointed out that technically, the U.S. has not sanctioned Russian oil, nor has it subscribed to the European Union\u2019s latest price cap on it. Mr. Trump had also not penalised China, which is the world\u2019s largest importer of Russian oil. \u201cCutting Indian purchases of Russian oil is unlikely to make him back off. He wants a trade deal on his terms,\u201d Mr. Chellaney added. Until recently, India imported about 2 million barrels a day, and is the second largest importer of Russian oil. <\/p>\n
Mr. Singh pointed to the past 25 years as a period of building trust between the two countries, and a steady improvement in relations after the previous era, where India had seen the U.S. as a \u201ccoercive and an unreliable partner\u201d for its backing of Pakistan, the 1971 Bangladesh War intervention, and the 1998 sanctions on India for its nuclear tests. Since 2008, after the U.S. helped India win exemptions at the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group for doing nuclear trade, he said this perception seriously changed. He also said that the U.S. had supplied drones and winter clothing to support Indian forces during the India-China stand-off at the Line of Actual Control at \u201cshort notice\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut because of what President Trump has done in India, there\u2019s a resurrection of the old and bitter memories of the U.S.,\u201d Mr. Singh who is a Senior Fellow at Delhi-based Carnegie India and a Professor at Ashoka University.\u00a0\u201cSo President Trump and the U.S. may feel that they are putting some penalties on India, high tariffs, I would say that they are putting high tariffs and penalties, less on India, and more on the U.S.-India relationship. It will take some time for the relationship to come out from this shock that has been generated\u201d, he added.<\/p>\n
Published – August 08, 2025 11:06 pm IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Image used for representative purpose only. | Photo Credit: REUTERS India cannot cancel oil imports from Russia as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":328787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[118331,118330,332,118182,103845,118332,112856],"class_list":{"0":"post-328786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-can-india-stop-buying-russian-oil","9":"tag-india-russia-oil-trade","10":"tag-russia","11":"tag-trump-50-tariffs-on-india","12":"tag-trump-tariffs-on-india","13":"tag-us-sanctions-on-russia","14":"tag-us-tariffs-on-india"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114995075886578289","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/328787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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